RESIDENTS OF PERUVIAN CAPITAL REELING FROM CHOLERA OUTBREAK

Fishermen eat beans, the undernourished poor must now go without seafood, and thousands of would-be beachgoers stay home. A cholera epidemic that has claimed 115 lives has affected virtually everybody in this oceanside capital.

Seafood restaurants serve pizza, swimming pools have been drained, and on a positive note, officials are trying harder to clean up this grimy city and shut down unsanitary food vendors.The government said Tuesday that 115 Peruvians have died and 25,000 others have been treated since cholera first appeared in coastal fishing towns in late January. The epidemic is the first in the Americas since early this century.

International health officials say the outbreak is part of a pandemic that began in 1961 in Indonesia and has since spread to 98 countries. Cholera will probably spread from Peru to other South American nations, they say.

No one knows how cholera first entered Peru, one of Latin America's poorest nations. The disease causes diarrhea so severe a victim can become dehydrated within hours. It is rarely deadly if treated quickly.

Cholera is usually transmitted by food or water contaminated by infected feces. Every day the sewage of Lima's 7 million people is dumped untreated into the Pacific.